Customer Reviews

Innovating With Infrastructure: The Automobile Industry in India

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Excellent book. Clearly written, well reasoned and evidenced. I use several chapters in my graduate courses on economic development. Helps to illustrate the conditions under which development practitioners can use infrastructure bottlenecks to guide policies designed to deepen and improve supply chain management. Offers important policy lessons and insights for both developing and advanced industrial economies. A must read for students of infrastructure planning and economic development.

Instructive and funny! Not only did this carefully researched book provide valuable gems of insight on how infrastructure can be used to foster industrial development within industries and across firms, it was thoroughly and unexpectedly entertaining! (The anecdotes were particularly captivating!) A model of solid empirical research and a must read!

This is a very important book for academics and practitioners interested in infrastructure planning and economic development. By using a micro- or firm-level approach to understand the linkage between infrastructure and industrial competitiveness in India, Gulyani successfuly illustrates infrastructure as a key dynamic shaping the process of economic development. The excellent case-studies on electricity and transportation that examine manufacturers' supply-chains put firms centre-stage in the story. By revealing that firms are both consumers and producers of infrastructure services, Gulyani shows that users are not just passive recepients but also co-producers of such services. The studies also demonstrate how local governments can act as enabling partners, investors, planners or regulators in infrastruture planning. This book is a major departure from the current conventional wisdom on infrastructure provision, i.e. the relatively stale private vs public provision debate. Instead, by combining three strands of literature (location theory, lean production and industrial districts), Gulyani offers a more sophisticated framework that advocates an approach combining the private vs public extremes, and by doing so offers a new and dynamic alternative for infrastructure provision.

As the review below indicates, this book is invaluable for development practitioners. In addition, Prof. Gulyani's book is an excellent example of case study-based inductive research. The primary focus is on the case study of Maruti Suzuki, India's largest carmaker, but the research also compares the findings with other car firms in India, including Ford, Hyundai, Daewoo and Telco. Social science researchers will find the masterful approach instructive and inspiring.

I found the book to be very poorly written and full of useless jargon. In addition to not providing any useful insight to the industry, it also has several data errors. A complete waste of money!

I found the book very poorly written. The language is full of industry jargon and provides limited insight into the automotive sector in India. In addition, there are several data errors.